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Hi folks,
I wasn't sure where to post this, but I did want to let you know I was again amongst the functioning. I hope you don't mind my unloading.
It seems I am at least part way back from what I guess could be construed as an ‘interesting’ experience. I’d like to piece it together for you as best I can. To start with I had my fifth angioplasty and stenting about two months ago, and it seems my tolerance of Plavix has diminished dramatically. It is usually prescribed to prevent strokes and heart attacks from the coating on the stent.
I took to falling out of bed and smashing my ribcage on my end table and jamming my big toes in the floor making strange and wondrous black and blue marks. Then it really began. I was bleeding from my nose, my hemorrhoids, there was blood in my urine and I had diarrhea for two weeks straight. On December 16 I showed up (barely) at five AM for my dialysis treatment. I was just ‘hooked up’ when I felt terrible. They called the meat wagon and dragged me off to the hospital where my potassium was shown to have skyrocketed to over seven. They gave me a drug that made me pass everything I had eaten in the past month, did a dialysis treatment and brought the potassium level down to 2.5, so they than gave me 40 meq of potassium.
Then came the MRI’s, the CAT scans, the daily x-rays, the semi hourly blood tests, and all the rest. My pulmonologist found ‘stuff’ in my lungs and we discussed whether my lungs should be aspirated or biopsied. I opted for aspiration with biopsy later if needed. They then gave me a drug which didn’t agree with me – to say the least. I was crazy for 48 hours with hallucinations and all. Five nurses were needed to restrain me, the firt one getting a restraint around my left wrist which he then kept yanking on. I have significant rheumatoid arthritis in that area and it was quite painful, but once they had me subdued I went out. I awoke to find a tube down my throat and the aspiration process completed. My pulmonologist said he had removed all the blood clots and sent them off to Mayo for biopsy, but the local man said he didn’t think it was cancer or some other disease. (You have to realize I was in a deep fog and not too much was making sense here.) They did confirm that I also had pneumonia and CHF. I was on a pacemaker for a while also, and there is some discussion about my getting one as my pulse was erratic and either very slow or very fast with the diastolic going from 20 – 40 up to over 120.
They removed the tube and I tried to recover, but I was so tipsy I couldn’t even go to the john. (Those nurses have to be special gifts to the rest of us. One of G-ds better callings.) The next day had some interesting events. Primarily, in a swirl, the wall with the TV became the floor and I had to hang onto the bed to keep from falling. After a bit things rearranged themselves properly. The doctor’s thought it might be vertigo but I had that year’s ago and this was different.
On December 23rd we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary and on Christmas afternoon I was released home. I will be getting home health care and physical therapy, but I don’t know how much they can do for me so soon. I can barely walk from one room to another. Today I went for dialysis but had to stop an hour short as I couldn’t take any more. It took a half hour to make it from the couch to my car at the curb, and I drove home very carefully. My wife is wondering if I was discharged too soon, but all the doctors are now on vacation and I think I am better off at home. Of course everything hurts – particularly my chest when I breath, and then my whole body. My legs scream when I try to walk and my arms and body are a mass of black and blue marks. So far that is as close as I’ve been to death, so I am trying to recover as quickly as possible, but not pushing it to a relapse. Hope you all had a happy Christmas season and will be treated gently in the coming year.
Burt
I wasn't sure where to post this, but I did want to let you know I was again amongst the functioning. I hope you don't mind my unloading.
It seems I am at least part way back from what I guess could be construed as an ‘interesting’ experience. I’d like to piece it together for you as best I can. To start with I had my fifth angioplasty and stenting about two months ago, and it seems my tolerance of Plavix has diminished dramatically. It is usually prescribed to prevent strokes and heart attacks from the coating on the stent.
I took to falling out of bed and smashing my ribcage on my end table and jamming my big toes in the floor making strange and wondrous black and blue marks. Then it really began. I was bleeding from my nose, my hemorrhoids, there was blood in my urine and I had diarrhea for two weeks straight. On December 16 I showed up (barely) at five AM for my dialysis treatment. I was just ‘hooked up’ when I felt terrible. They called the meat wagon and dragged me off to the hospital where my potassium was shown to have skyrocketed to over seven. They gave me a drug that made me pass everything I had eaten in the past month, did a dialysis treatment and brought the potassium level down to 2.5, so they than gave me 40 meq of potassium.
Then came the MRI’s, the CAT scans, the daily x-rays, the semi hourly blood tests, and all the rest. My pulmonologist found ‘stuff’ in my lungs and we discussed whether my lungs should be aspirated or biopsied. I opted for aspiration with biopsy later if needed. They then gave me a drug which didn’t agree with me – to say the least. I was crazy for 48 hours with hallucinations and all. Five nurses were needed to restrain me, the firt one getting a restraint around my left wrist which he then kept yanking on. I have significant rheumatoid arthritis in that area and it was quite painful, but once they had me subdued I went out. I awoke to find a tube down my throat and the aspiration process completed. My pulmonologist said he had removed all the blood clots and sent them off to Mayo for biopsy, but the local man said he didn’t think it was cancer or some other disease. (You have to realize I was in a deep fog and not too much was making sense here.) They did confirm that I also had pneumonia and CHF. I was on a pacemaker for a while also, and there is some discussion about my getting one as my pulse was erratic and either very slow or very fast with the diastolic going from 20 – 40 up to over 120.
They removed the tube and I tried to recover, but I was so tipsy I couldn’t even go to the john. (Those nurses have to be special gifts to the rest of us. One of G-ds better callings.) The next day had some interesting events. Primarily, in a swirl, the wall with the TV became the floor and I had to hang onto the bed to keep from falling. After a bit things rearranged themselves properly. The doctor’s thought it might be vertigo but I had that year’s ago and this was different.
On December 23rd we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary and on Christmas afternoon I was released home. I will be getting home health care and physical therapy, but I don’t know how much they can do for me so soon. I can barely walk from one room to another. Today I went for dialysis but had to stop an hour short as I couldn’t take any more. It took a half hour to make it from the couch to my car at the curb, and I drove home very carefully. My wife is wondering if I was discharged too soon, but all the doctors are now on vacation and I think I am better off at home. Of course everything hurts – particularly my chest when I breath, and then my whole body. My legs scream when I try to walk and my arms and body are a mass of black and blue marks. So far that is as close as I’ve been to death, so I am trying to recover as quickly as possible, but not pushing it to a relapse. Hope you all had a happy Christmas season and will be treated gently in the coming year.
Burt
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